This tyrannical practice having been brought before the committee on military affairs, some of them investigated the subject. As a result, a resolution was offered calling for a public inquiry, which resolution passed. The next day Thaddeus Stevens attempted to get it rescinded, whereupon he was met by a fiery speech from Mr. Garfield, which saved the resolution; and in a few days there was a general freeing of all prisoners against whom no sufficient charges could be made.
In his speech, Mr. Garfield graphically told of the great injustice which was being done, especially to men who had served the country in the field. One of these was a colonel in the Union army, who had been wounded and discharged from the service, but now, for some unknown reason, perhaps maliciously, had been deprived of his liberty. Mr. Garfield had been an admirer of Stanton, and recognized the great Secretary’s ability and patriotism; but this could not save either him or his subordinates from just censures.
This action was the occasion of much admiring notice from the public, and even from Stanton himself. For such was the reputed roughness of Stanton’s temper that few men ever had enough temerity to criticise him.
On the night of April 14, 1865, the war-heated blood of this nation was frozen with sudden horror at a deed which then had no parallel in American history—the murder of Abraham Lincoln.
That night General Garfield was in New York City.
In the early morning hours a colored servant came to the door of his room at the hotel, and in a heart-broken voice announced that Mr. Lincoln, the emancipator of his race from bondage, had been shot down by a traitor to the country.
Morning came; but dark were the hours whose broken wings labored to bring the light of day. Soon the streets were filled with people. Every body seemed to have come out and left the houses empty. It was not a holiday, and yet all seemed to be doing nothing. No business was transacted, yet mirth and laughter were unheard. Such silence and such multitudes never before were met together.
Garfield wandered out into the streets, and noted these ominous appearances. The city was like Paris, just before its pavements are to be torn up for a barricade battle in some revolutionary outbreak.
Great posters, fixed in prominent places, called for a nine o’clock meeting of citizens at Wall Street Exchange Building. The newspaper bulletins, black, brief recorders of fate as they are, were surrounded with crushing crowds waiting for the latest word from Washington.
Arriving in the region of Wall Street, General Garfield made his way through the mass of men who surrounded the Exchange Building, until he reached the balcony. Here Benjamin F. Butler was making an address. Fifty thousand people were crowding toward that central figure, from whose left arm waved a yard of crape which told the terrible story to multitudes who could not hear his words.